


Little Father, Little Daughter

by soitgoes2142



Series: Little Father, Little Daughter [1]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Childbirth, Do elves have baby showers? Sure, Family Dynamics, Family Feels, Father-Daughter Relationship, Gen, Genderbending, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-30
Updated: 2020-07-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:06:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25604785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soitgoes2142/pseuds/soitgoes2142
Summary: What if Celebrimbor's mother was, simply, Curufin? A story about Curufin, the daughter of Feanor.
Relationships: Fem!Curufin / Unnamed Partner
Series: Little Father, Little Daughter [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1897735
Comments: 2
Kudos: 45





	Little Father, Little Daughter

**Author's Note:**

> * Disclaimer: I have limited knowledge of both childbirth and blacksmithing. Going for the feelings and not the facts! 
> 
> ** Additional disclaimer: I'm using the Sindarin names in a story set in Aman because I like them better, and that's all there is to it. Enjoy! :)

By the time Curufin was born, Nerdanel had resigned herself to being a mother of sons. After four boys in quick succession, Nerdanel had heard plenty of comfort and commiseration. A pity you don’t have a daughter, the friends and relatives murmured, to keep you company, to hear your stories. But Nerdanel knew her boys were enough, enough and more.

She had already given them much of what the ladies at court worried she must reserve for a girl. To Maedhros she taught her independence, to Maglor she gifted jewel-bright tales. To Celegorm she bequeathed an eye for nature, to Caranthir deft hands and quiet fortitude. Nerdanel gloried in her sons, though she did wonder at their number. Perhaps it had to do with the fiery nature of her husband’s spirit. After all, Feanor had blazed through his own mother.

Curufin caught them both by surprise. When the midwife declared that she had borne a girl, Nerdanel thought she must have misheard. The pregnancy had felt much like the others, the baby sitting low which the busybody relatives said meant a male child on the way. But when Curufin was placed at her breast Nerdanel understood. Her new daughter was a tiny copy of the father - Feanor in her every feature. A tuft of dark hair. Olive skin. Miriel Therinde’s grey eyes. Feanor bent over the baby in wonder, as he had over all their children. But there was a special gentleness in the way he stroked her tiny fist, the way a glint of fire sparked between their eyes. Nerdanel had borne a daughter, but Curufin would never be fully hers.

\--

Curufin grew into a serious and studious child, drawn to the forge and her father’s knee. She was accustomed to being surrounded by a maelstrom of boys. Maedhros and Maglor dolled out shoulder rides and lullabies, but were half-grown and half-distant. Caranthir was easier to bait. Sometimes they scuffled in the courtyard when he pulled her braid or she snarled his embroidery thread. The red-headed twins diverted Nerdanel’s attention away from the daughter she had never needed but still, sometimes, hoped for.

Celegorm belonged to his sister. He was big and brash and sometimes cruel, but surprisingly gentle with fragile things. When Caranthir was born Celegorm couldn’t have cared less. He had just learned the language of the birds and twitched with the amount of needless knowledge they whistled in his ears all day. When Curufin arrived he was older and had mastered the art of only hearing cries of danger (though the mating calls were hard to ignore). They made an odd pair, the blond adolescent bursting with energy and birdsong, the slim girl driven by inner fire. But when the children of Feanor and their many cousins swapped playmates and suspicions, no one doubted Celegorm and Curufin’s loyalty.

And then there was Feanor. Nerdanel had been right to guess that Curufin would bend towards her father. She was his spitting image and drank in his every word of praise or critique. Feanor brought all his children to work in the forge as they grew. Curufin envied Maedhros his height and power, Celegorm his broad shoulders, until she realized that they drifted away after completing the simple tasks their father set them. She alone built calluses on calluses, muscles girding her arms, hands that seemed immune to flame. “Spirit of fire,” her father murmured as she grasped an iron bare-handed. Curufin grinned and blistered.

There was something special to the forge, to the boldness she felt there, the power she burnished when she worked with her father. She became his partner and longed to equal his innovations. Curufin never saw anything so beautiful as the first sword he pulled from the cooling basin, shining in the light of Telperion.

Nerdanel tried to teach Curufin her own crafts, bringing her into the artist’s studio and giving her clay, pencils, needles. The girl’s paintings remained listless, her sculptures lifeless. Curufin didn’t want to find the figure in the stone. She wanted to bend metal into the shape she envisioned. She wanted to set the conditions exactly right, to make the hard breakable and the fragile impenetrable. Nerdanel let her daughter set a course for ringing anvils, hissing water and sizzling flame. Towards the towering plume of her father’s love.

The boys were plenty, they were more than enough. Maedhros came by the studio and dropped a kiss on his mother’s head. Maglor played his harp for hours to relax Nerdanel’s models during sittings. Celegorm brought her leaves and stones from far flung hunting trips. Caranthir came to her shame-faced, and poured out his heart. The twins were still small enough to swing up onto her lap. She and Curufin were just different. Never quite comfortable with each other, ever since that first moment of surprise and discovery, when Nerdanel saw the gleam in her baby’s eye and named her only daughter “little father.”

\--

Curufin grew. She became a serious and studious young woman, strong as an ox and twice as stubborn. She needed nothing more than her father’s approval and her brothers’ companionship. Celegorm’s company was preferred, but she went to Maedhros for questions, Maglor for sympathy, Caranthir for anger, the twins for lightheartedness. She still spent little time with her mother.

Curufin was grown, and she was sharp - quick with her mind, her tongue, her eyes. Her days were filled with the forge, and she had no desire for bonds beyond blood and friendship. Curufin noticed things. She saw Maedhros and Fingon turn towards each other in increasing desperation, heard Maglor’s mournful-sounding songs whether he sang about love lost or love found. She knew Celegorm fell in and out of his hunting companions’ bedrolls as frequently as the wind changed. She witnessed Caranthir’s surprising turn to domesticity, his new wife cooling the embers of his temper with a touch. Curufin did not have a lover or a husband. She could not afford to have her fire banked, did not want to be dulled by anyone’s touch.

And then she went to the mountains.

She went to the mountains for the mines, and returned with something precious. Feanor was seeking to build their store of weapons and armor. (Paranoid hissed Maedhros, trouble-making whispered Caranthir, and then Curufin’s eyes smoked them into silence). They needed more iron and steel. Not having ventured outside of Tirion for years, Curufin volunteered to lead the team of blacksmiths to the mining outpost in the mountains. The pleased nod of her father’s head sent Curufin scrambling for furs and sturdy boots.

When Curufin and her companions arrived at the mine they had plenty of gold. But the miners stuck to the old ways - work in exchange for material, knowledge for resources. It was so beautifully Noldorin that it took Curufin’s breath away. She set about teaching the members of the mining colony her father’s techniques for setting jewels, for tempering steel, for casting crowns. Her most attentive student was constant but quiet. He only had to be taught once, and then his hammer danced. He had a sturdy build, shoulders to rival hers, hands large enough to span her waist. She made the mistake of mentioning this in a letter to Celegorm, whose love ran freely in all directions (and who was never, as a rule, polite). _Big hands_ , he wrote. _Perhaps you should see how his cock measures up_. P _erhaps_ , Curufin thought, and kept her own council.

Curufin returned from the mountains with steel and memories and something precious. On the last night before she left the mountains, her most attentive student had kissed her as if trying to lick her clean, and taken her over the anvil so wonderfully that she burned all the way home to Tirion. It wasn’t the first cold night that they had warmed each other, but it would not leave the mountains, for he would not leave the mountains. The mine was his childhood and his vocation, the mountains the seat of his people. Curufin’s fire would not tear him from it. She was content with the sweet sear of parting.

\--

Curufin’s family embraced her heartily on her return. Celegorm’s hug lifted her off her feet. Her father sang the praises of the metals she had won from the mountains. Nerdanel approached her last and searched her face, looking for a way in, finding only fire and triumph. Curufin returned to her routine of forge and family, dinners with her brothers and festivals with the cousins who nettled her least.

But despite the return to lower elevation, her hammer started to feel heavier, she found herself wanting to truly close her eyes at night, her stomach churned long after she played a spinning game with Amrod and Amras in their sunny courtyard. Curufin began to notice, and she began to count. She was nothing if not calculating, not thorough. She wanted to be sure.

One day she appeared in Nerdanel’s studio, still in her blacksmith’s smock and long dark braid. Her mother was working on a self-portrait, doubling her red-haired reflection. Nerdanel looked up and caught her daughter’s eye in the mirror, smiled. It was easier that way. Curufin didn’t truly smile back, just stood behind her mother in the mirror, removed her smock, and then lifted her tunic to her chest, exposing the curve of her belly.

“I think it’s going to be a boy,” she said in a small but steely voice. “I know so,” said Nerdanel, accepting Curufin’s secret like the offering it was. This time, she turned and smiled into her daughter’s face.

\--

Moving with the swiftness of motherhood, Nerdanel bent her husband’s ear before Curufin could think to tell Feanor what else she had brought from the mountains. Working together at the forge one day, her father placed a hand on Curufin’s back. “I have something for you,” Feanor said, and placed into her outstretched palms not a strand of wire or a new cut stone, but an intricately constructed mobile. Gems hung from its delicate tendrils, twinkling like Varda’s stars. “So your child will never be alone in the dark.” Curufin had not cried since she was a child herself and would not do so now. Without removing her visor, she buried her face in her father’s chest.

\--

When the curve of her stomach paired with the lifting of the hammer started to draw increasingly worried looks in the forge, Nerdanel insisted that Curufin spend some more time with women, who knew the pains and joys she would soon be experiencing. Curufin acquiesced to her mother’s demands, but burned with her eyes any man who stared at her belly as she removed her heavy gloves and smock, returned her tools to their places, and went to her baby shower.

Curufin tried her best to disappear at a party in her honor. She smiled a smile that didn’t reach her eyes at Indis. She let her mind drift to the projects waiting in the forge as Nerdanel greeted Anaire and Earwen. Still, Curufin preferred the (half) family members to the gaggle of court ladies who had already seized Caranthir’s young wife. She could hear them asking loudly if even King Finwe knew who had fathered his first great-grandchild.

With relief, Curufin noticed her two female cousins standing together. Aredhel, Celegorm’s frequent hunting partner, and Galadriel, whose proud strangeness had always appealed to Curufin. She grabbed a slice of cake and made her way towards these tolerable cousins (others might say “favorite”). Galadriel inclined her head and Aredhel smiled widely as Curufin approached. “Little cousin!” Aredhel crowed, tossing back her long braids. “Not so little anymore,” she joked as Curufin’s stomach made its way into their circle. “I feel so unwieldy,” Curufin admitted. “I don’t know why anyone would do this more than once.”

Galadriel chuckled and replied, “Yet you are one of seven children, I am one of five, Aredhel one of four, there must be something to it.” Aredhel rolled her eyes. “Our family is especially prolific. My mother says her generation were nearly drunk with the abundance of Aman when they arrived, glorying in the safety and fertility of the land.” Galadriel made a low sound. “I’ve heard my father say that before they came West, couples sought to have at least three children, for one or two were often lost to the Dark Rider.” “Well, my son will be an only child,” Curufin declared.

An odd blank look crossed Galadriel’s face. When she spoke next, her voice came from a hidden place. “We shall each have a single child, and they shall know more darkness than we have ever seen.” The cousins stood in sharp silence for a moment, and then dispersed to get more cake. It was easier that way.

\---

When Curufin’s pains came she had only her family about her, as was her way. They were earlier than expected but the large household had seen seven births, and they were not unprepared. Maedhros lifted her in his arms as Maglor and Nerdanel made up her bed with the special birthing sheets. Celegorm shouted for the twins to run and fetch the midwife from across the city (run for your lives you little bastards!). As she tried to breathe and her brothers and mother whisked her towards the house, Curufin glimpsed her father, still and stricken in the courtyard. Childbirth had always unlocked a primal fear in him. Feanor was afraid that he would lose her. Curufin wanted to comfort him, her father, her fiery reflection, but something was unspooling inside her and she needed her mother, she needed her mother now.

The pain mounted quickly but Nerdanel was there, Nerdanel said that all was well, that it would all be over soon. And there was sweat and there were tears and Curufin cursed the mountains and the anvil and even her father. There was a whispered conference at the door, and she heard the little red-heads muttering and she roared _tell me what they’re saying_ and Maedhros said _you’re early the midwife is attending another birth_ and Curufin cried and Nerdanel said _I’ve had seven children I think she needs to push now_ and Celegorm said _I’ve whelped dogs and birthed calves_ and Maglor said _I bet the calves were born with two heads_ and Celegorm snarled and Caranthir laughed and Curufin yelled at her favorite brother _just do it you blond bastard_!

And so they helped her push, supporting her on a scaffold of limbs. Nerdanel slung Curufin’s left arm over her shoulders and rubbed her back. Maedhros, bent double, let her grip his hands painfully tight. The twins were pressed into service fetching water and towels and cool cloths for her face. Maglor held up her left leg and Caranthir her right as Celegorm crouched at the end of the bed, ready to catch the most precious thing Curufin had ever carried. Curufin screamed and there was blood and cursing and Nerdanel said _my darling you are so close_ and Caranthir said _holy mother of Manwe_ and Maglor said _do you think I can write a song about this_ and Maedhros tried to cuff him with the hand that Curufin hadn’t turned painfully numb and Celegorn called out, _little sister I can see the head!_

It was over in blood and burning and a piercing cry as Celegorm held her baby boy aloft. Nerdanel cauterized Caranthir’s embroidery scissors over the fire and cut the cord ( _you’re never using those again_ said Celegorm, bloody to the elbows) and her son was placed on Curufin’s chest. He felt like light, like Laurelin incarnate against her skin, the best most gentle kind of fire. Nerdanel led Feanor into the room, and he nearly collapsed with relief by Curufin’s side. He traced the curve of his grandson’s ear. He made a quiet sound in his chest.

Her brothers kissed her and all held her silver-eyed son, but after the initial outpouring of joy Nerdanel made everyone leave the room. Curufin was never so grateful to be rid of her beloved father, her beloved brothers. Nerdanel sat by her side and helped her wrap the baby. They had heard the midwife would soon arrive to make sure they were well, that Curufin would mend.

Curufin looked into her son’s face and saw no real trace of her most attentive student, just her own dark hair, her own grey eyes. She couldn’t tell yet if they had fire in them. “I don’t know what to do,” Curufin stammered, her eyes leaking. “I think I love him too much.”

“I know,” said Nerdanel. “It can feel like that when they are so fully yours.” And she kissed Curufin’s dirty, sweaty forehead, and for a brief moment, everything was healed.

THE END

*Thanks for reading!*


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